---
layout: docs
page_title: Storage Plugins
description: |-
  Storage plugins help you schedule job tasks with dynamically managed storage volumes. Dynamic host volume plugins provision host volumes on client nodes. Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugins provision volumes in
  third-party systems, such as AWS Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) persistent disks, and Ceph.
---

# Storage Plugins

Nomad has built-in support for scheduling compute resources such as
CPU, memory, and networking. Nomad's storage plugin support extends
this to allow scheduling tasks with dynamically managed storage volumes.

Choose between two types of storage plugins:

* [Dynamic host volume (DHV) plugins][dhv] provision host volumes on client
  nodes, and jobs request placement on any node that has a particular host
  volume by name.
  * DHV brings allocations to volumes.
  * Install DHV plugins on Nomad nodes, similar to task drivers. Creating a
    host volume ties it to the node until the volume is deleted.
* [Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugins][csi] provision volumes in
  third-party systems, such as cloud vendors. Nomad calls on them to make
  the volume available on any node that Nomad chooses to place an allocation.
  * CSI brings volumes to allocations.
  * Deploy CSI plugins as Nomad jobs, often two jobs per plugin. Nomad tracks
    which clients have instances of a given plugin, so it can call on the
    plugin to mount the volume.

[dhv]: /nomad/docs/architecture/storage/host-volumes
[csi]: /nomad/docs/architecture/storage/csi
